I first met Macy Rodman in 2018. She and Theda Hammel had just started a podcast called NYMPHOWARS. We sat on beer kegs in the basement of a Bushwick bar called Happy Fun Hideaway, discussing the podcast’s vertiginous bathroom humor—a perfect analogue, Macy explained, for content-production at large, which promises self-expression, connection and art, but only ever delivers crap.
Fast forward to today. Neither of us is in our twenties anymore. Macy lives in Spain. That first interview we did, published in a Vice subsidiary that no longer exists, is gone, as is, perhaps, the 2010s trans Bushwick nightlife world that Macy helped create, whittled down by inflated rents and police.
Macy, of course, is still a star.
In her fourth studio album, SCALD, a femme fatale protagonist flees across narratively discrete, concatenated worlds that evaporate under her heels. Photorealistic skylines drip into green screens. Macy wears a trench, and beneath it, a sheer negligee.
Descending into broad daylight
Catching a glimpse of
Assailant through the railing to my
Lyrics to (Stairwell (ft. Colin Self)) by Macy Rodman
I listened to SCALD; I photosynthesized its music videos. But, like any committed noir detective, I was left with more questions than anything else. Questions like: What is the context of context of context collapse? Why is the “gyre” getting bigger? Why is the supply so chain?
I sat down with Macy to get to the bottom of all of it.
Charlie Markbreiter: I was about to say good morning. But it’s afternoon for you.
Macy Rodman: It’s 4 p.m.!
Charlie Markbreiter: How did you move to Spain?
Macy Rodman: My husband and I left in April. I had never been to Europe before. But we were scared that we weren’t going to be able to access hormones [anymore in the U.S.].
Charlie Markbreiter: Do you miss Bushwick?
Macy Rodman: There wasn’t much in Bushwick in the 2010s. Happy Fun was kind of the only gay bar over there. But that era was also romantic: going to punk houses and doing drugs and not having money and starting transition and meeting all these new people. Me and Colin Self and Eartheater and Raul De Nieves were working behind the bar. Living right under the JMZ train on Myrtle-Broadway.
Since moving, I’ve gone back to Bushwick periodically and been like, yeah, I’m too old for this. I’m too used to the European lifestyle. But it’s safely in the past, and I’ll cherish it there.
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